How many pages gulliver travels

It was a very pleasant and unexpected surprise. The reference points I had were cartoon retellings of this from my youth.

I only really had an image of Gulliver vs the Lilliputians - and that was only the most basic "giant in a land full of very small people" storylines well, they were trying to entertain children, so it doesn't have to get much more complex than that.

But, the book is made up of more stories than just Gulliver as a giant hence the Travels - plural. The content of these stories is witty and not-so-thinly veiled political and social commentary.

In the end, it didn't feel like required reading at all - it was a truly enjoyable adventure I was glad to take! Jonathan Swift — writes towards the end of his book This thought warns me against continuing any further with my review.

But the Travels of Gullible Gulliver have made me laugh like no other book for a long time. And I want to share this. The introduction in my edition by Michael Foot was almost as funny. His rehabilitation started during WW1, beginning with a lecture in Cambridge in Some rejection still lingered for a while and surprisingly both George Orwell and Aldous Huxley were highly critical of Swift. Nowadays, many aspects of this book appeal strongly to our more cynical and detached age.

As everyone knows this is a book about travelling. The popularity of two of its four parts and their easy refashioning into tales for children disguise the fact that the book was written as a parody of the then prevailing travel writing.

If for us Travel now means consumption, then it still meant discovery. But in all discoveries there is some degree of presumptuousness. And this is what bothered Swift. But this book is a journey in itself: Travel into Acerbity. Each part becomes more acidic and sour than the previous one. And if the Victorians found it indecent we have to admit that there is a fair amount of stripping in this book, but not of clothes. Swift is stripping human nature.

For apart from the hilarious and highly creative stories, the sum of reflections on the relativity of some of our beliefs, which we hold as absolute, constitutes a fully developed treatise on us. The Fantastic and Utopian character is disguised by Swift's framing with exact dates each of the four trips. Gulliver sets off on the 4th of May and returns from his final trip on the 5th of December And another adamantly denied that the whole thing could be true!!

The third trip, to the Land of Laputa some knowledge of Spanish helps in understanding this title is an amusing diatribe against mathematicians and academics. A good reader of Swift must be willing to embrace self-parody. The fourth and final trip is the most controversial one, since it is a direct blow at the arrogance of human nature. In spite of the irony and satire, his writing reads as coming directly from the pen of Mister Common Sense. Swift wrote in a limpid form, keeping a perfect pace that accompanied an impeccable stream of clear thinking.

Swift was known for his conviction on the appropriate use of language: That the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated.

And to make sure of this, he would read aloud to his servants to confirm that his text would be understood. He kept his humour until the end, and this is what he wrote for his own epitaph.

He gave the little wealth he had, To build a House for Fools and Mad. I close this book feeling a great respect for the smart, polite Houyhnhnms who enjoy a level of wisdom and common sense that should be the envy of all of us. I really don't know how I formed this opinion, but it was how I viewed this book until now.

It is a prosaic satire directed at human nature and human conduct. There is adventure of course, but only to provide the background to work on satire. The story consists of four different voyages of Gulliver and the many adventures that he encounters in the process. Swift uses Gulliver's experiences during these adventure and his trials to satirize the human nature and human conduct generally.

There is no branch that escapes Swift's satire. The human greed for power and avarice are two areas that meet heavily with his satire.

Under the first category, European governments including his own , their politics, their diplomacy and international relations comes under heavy blows. Under the second category, many individuals ranging from politicians, lawyers, doctors to common man and woman suffer from his lashes. I never suffer a word to pass that may possibly give the least offence, even to those who are most ready to take it. The book was published, anonymously, at top speed.

Motte, who sensed a bestseller, used several presses to foil any attempt at piracy, and made many cuts to reduce the risk of prosecution.

The first edition appeared, in two volumes, on 26 October , priced 8s 6d, and sold out its first printing in less than a week. Little Women. Pride and Prejudice. George's Marvellous Medicine. Roald Dahl , Quentin Blake. Diary of a Wimpy Kid BK1. The Secret Garden. To Kill A Mockingbird. The Night Circus.

Nineteen Eighty-Four. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator colour edition. Quentin Blake , Roald Dahl. Frances Hodgson Burnett. His Dark Materials. Jane Eyre. The Count of Monte Cristo.